Sloping garden ideas – how to create brilliant sloping borders…

How to garden successfully on a slope. Whether you’re living on a mountain or just have a small bank to plant up, experienced gardeners Richard and Lesley explain how gardening on a slope is different from gardening on the flat. Here they share their top tips:
00:00 You don’t need special plants for a slope
00:30 How to start gardening on a slope
01:06 You see slopes from more angles than flat gardens have
01:58 Should you plant a slope with the smallest plants at the front, tallest at the back?
03:34 Work out how the sun falls on your slope
03:48 Staking is important on a slope
05:15 Do you need ‘mat-forming plants’?
05:30 It’s essential to mulch your garden well
06:00 Watering a sloping border
06:51 Terracing a sloping garden
09:56 Managing shady slopes
10:45 What have been your most successful border plants?

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If you’ve got a sloping garden you don’t need  special plants, but you do need different   techniques of planting, watering and even design.  It’s Alexandra here from The Middle-Sized Garden   YouTube channel and blog, and I visited Richard  and Lesley’s sloping garden to see how different  

Gardening on a slope was from gardening on  the flat. It’s a larger garden than the ones   we usually feature on The Middle-Sized Garden,  but the tips and techniques are absolutely the   same – whether you’re gardening on a mountain,  or you just have a small bank. So Lesley,  

Tell me what you think the most important thing  is when you start to garden in a sloping garden? I   think it’s to channel your inner mountain goat and  accept the fact that you have a sloping garden,  

And not pretend that you have a flat garden. And  there are I think two major things that you can do   in a sloping garden. One is work on a slope, and  accept the gradient in whatever border it is that  

You’re working in, and the other is to formally  terrace, so that you have a series of flat beds.   But in both cases you need to work with the slope  that you’re given. And you said that one of the  

Interesting things is that it’s a question of  the angles that you look at the borders on. Yes,   you see borders in a sloping garden from many more  angles than you do in a flat garden. For example,  

If you have a rectangular border and you can walk  all the way around it, you see it from the four   angles from the pathways, but you are also likely  to see a different aerial view from higher up in  

The garden, and a different view again from much  lower in the garden, where it forms a backdrop to   perhaps something else in the middle. So you need  to think about all of those things when designing   planting material. But they are wonderful things  – they’re challenging things – but they’re also  

Wonderful things, and it can mean that you can get  longer vistas in a sloping garden than you can in   a completely flat garden. So if you were actually  planning that border, would you be sort of putting  

Lower plants all the way around the sides, or how  would you actually deal with this fact you’ve got   up to six angles that you can see the border  from? Not necessarily putting the lower plants   all around the edge of the border, because one of  the difficulties of a sloping border is the height  

Issue, and the traditional “tallest at the back  smallest at the front” doesn’t work in a sloping   border, and you have to be bold sometimes and put  a terribly tall plant at the front, or the side,  

Or the back or the other side, so that it doesn’t  feel as though the entire border is going to slip   off. When you actually started here, had you  gardened on a slope before? No. So what did  

You immediately think about? Well this is an old  19th century garden that had been badly let go for   decades, so we are blessed with 19th century dry  stone walls, and magnificent trees, and 100-year   old rhododendron and not much else. So we decided  that we’d start from the house and work out. And  

The biggest sloping border happens to be right  next to the house, and that was essentially my   laboratory. It taught me a lot about how to work  on a quite a steep gradient, but I was prepared   to take things out that weren’t working, and I was  also prepared to move things around that weren’t  

Working. And there are a number of very practical  issues that you have to do with on a slope. One is   obviously water. The other is which direction the  sun is – that is whether you slope towards or away  

From the sun – because phototropism is very much  exaggerated on a gradient, and staking is a very   big issue on a slope, and I don’t think I’ve quite  cracked that. I’m a lot better than I used to be,  

But I experiment with new techniques of that every  year. And what’s been the most successful staking   technique? Well it depends on the plant, but I  always have to remember in spring as the brave   first shoots come out of the ground, to remember  just how tall a number of perennials can get. So  

That when you put a whole stack of staking in, and  it looks like some kind of industrial wasteland,   you know that actually fairly quickly the plant  material will cover it. One of the things about   that particular slope is that it is essentially  south facing, which in Australia is the non-sunny  

Direction, but it’s not exactly north/south,  so it’s slightly skewed which means that you   get a diagonal lean on a lot of the plants. And if  you grow things that are topheavy like liliums or   delphiniums or that kind of thing, they really do  want to topple over. And so I use a combination of  

Single stakes with circular keys on them that can  hold stems. I use hoops. I often trawl the garden   for twigs and stick those in, and make my own  sort of hatchings. And I also use fencing – black  

Fencing – which tends to hold very heavy  things back. And when you look on the internet,   and you think you know I want to find out more  about sloping gardens, it immediately starts to   talk about plants that have mat forming roots.  Have you noticed that some plants hold things,  

Hold in better and some don’t. Or do you think  this is actually not very useful information. I   haven’t deliberately planted anything that is mat  forming, although there are of course mat forming   plants that one just naturally puts in a garden.  The trick I think is to mulch incredibly well,  

Because that tends to hold a lot of water  in. And the other thing is when planting   to do some informal terracing, I suppose, so  when you’re digging the hole for the plant,   try and make it horizontal – so you dig the  hole deeper at the back of the slope than at  

The front. And with rocks or anything else, form  a little bastion around the roots at the front,   so that you have a horizontal little water moat,  until the plants get established. And do you find   watering is challenging on the slope? It is, if  the bed is aquaphobic. If you’ve mulched well, and  

You’ve put lots of leaf litter and the soil will  absorb the water, then it’s easier than if you   have a very very dry exposed soil in which case  the water just tends to run off. Do you find when  

You’re watering, you have to sort of do a slightly  slower stream of water to let things soak in, or   does the mulch basically help there. A mixture of  both, depending on the plant, and how new it is,  

And you know whether it’s on the you know “buck  up princess, you’re on your own”, or whether it’s   of the variety that you’re being a bit special  to. And of course when it comes to terracing,  

You had a certain amount of terracing here anyway,  but you did some more. And would you like to talk   us through this area, where there’s a huge great  Douglas fir, and and it did just sort of slope  

Down to this open lawn we’re on at the moment.  But it was all very undefined. So what did you do   there? Yes, it was part of the terribly overgrown  ferny monstrosity that was this garden. Where  

We’re sitting is in fact the old tennis court.  One of the very few flat bits of the garden,   although it has to be said that nothing is really  flat or straight or square in this garden. And so  

We cleared that, and found some very old steps  that had once been there, and repaired those.   But I’m blessed with a wonderful husband who’s  very practical. And so to define the area he   has taught himself dry stone walling. And so we  have built around that Douglas fir a dry stone  

Wall that then sweeps around the edge of the old  tennis court, and extended one of the other beds,   to give more definition to the slope. So that  there is a hard edge, and there is a drop, rather  

Than just always having this undulating garden.  So that we now have a mix of the gradient and the   flat. And therefore steps are quite important  as well. Steps are very important, and if you   haven’t learned how to make steps, you certainly  learn how to do so after you’ve been in a sloping  

Garden for a while. Because one of the things  that Richard said was that you can’t get the   heavy machinery in easily into a sloping garden.  So things are going to have to be done by hand,  

Which either means you learning to do it or paying  quite a lot for someone to do it. So what advice   would you give there? Well since we’re talking  on YouTube, one might just say that YouTube is   incredibly useful for learning skills that one  didn’t have previously. But when we established  

The vegetable garden, it’s in the spot where the  vegetable garden has always been since the house   was established in the late 19th century, but it  was just a slope. And so Richard dug it out by  

Hand, and I dread to think – he has told me – but  I think I’ve deliberately forgotten how many tons   of Earth he dug out to create three very formal  terraces that are now paved and flat raised beds  

And so on. And it was done because that’s really  the best way to maximize the sun, in what is a   very shady garden by and large. But also because  of where we live, and the myriad of critters that  

Want to come and destroy edible plants, we wanted  to fully enclose the productive garden – both the   vegetable garden and the orchard, which is just  above us where we’re sitting – but it does mean   that it provides a lovely contrast. So on a gentle  slope there is now something that is cut in,  

In a series of very flat terraces, and it just  provides that contrast that’s aesthetically   pleasing in a garden. And you said it’s quite  shady – that’s because there’s a lot of mature   trees in this particular garden. Yes. But are  there any issues with shade and slopes that you’re  

Aware of? Yes I find shady slopes easier than  sunny slopes, because shade plants – they will   seek some light – but they tend not to have the  extreme phototropism that sun-loving plants do. So  

I find staking less of an issue in a shady slope.  And in this garden we have very rich acidic soil,   so it’s a very lovely place to play with all the  wonderful woodland plants. At the sunny slopes,  

Tend to be the ones where you have to think more  about the standard things that are difficult in   sloping gardens; the staking, the watering,  playing with the heights. The big border that   you mentioned – what have you found the most  successful plants? That’s interesting. Roses, I  

Have found – although we do have a lot of critters  that like roses, so I tend to put those in the   middle of the border, hoping that possums and  deer and wombats and other such wonderful things,  

Don’t find them. I grow a lot of liliums, and they  are quite successful, although do require quite   a lot of staking. Delphiniums I struggle with,  because they get to their magnificent flowering   and then snap. And in-filling, I use quite a lot  of salvias. I use persicarias, euphorbias, just to  

Play with the mix of the shapes and so on. And I  also use a lot of bulbs that come and go – spring   through to autumn. And hydrangeas as well?  Hydrangeas yes, so that particular border – which  

Has a particularly sunny end, and a less sunny end  – at the back is a row of quercifolia hydrangeas,   which don’t mind whether there’s sun or shade. And  it also means that as you’re walking along that   terrace way, you don’t feel that you’re about  to topple down the slope. And would you say,  

You’ve actually probably tried virtually every  kind of plant, so people perhaps shouldn’t be too   worried about thinking “Oh I’ve got a sloping  garden, I can’t plant this or that”. Yes,   I think nothing ventured nothing gained. I think  the only rules really are plant things that suit  

Your climate. There’s no good doing dry you  know grasses if you’re in a very wet area,   and vice versa. But as long as it’s something  that I think is hardy enough in this environment,   I can give enough water to – although water is  not generally our problem – I’d give it a go.  

If you want to know more about how to plant  on a slope, then don’t miss this next video   called very appropriately “How to plant on a  slope”. And thank you for watching. Goodbye!